Tony Harrison: Passer

Allusion to Classical place 'Rome’s empire in ruins’

Relationship to Classical text Begins with the image of the sparrow pecking at the spewed detritus of art, buildings and society. Poetry is represented as a palimpsestic practice – Harrison reveals the layering process in reverse, beginning in the modern day, reversing through the texts of Bede and the author of The Ruin, to dwell on the image of the Roman ruins.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The fragmentary 8th century Old English poem The Ruin, from the Exeter Book. The Venerable Bede’s sparrow simile in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book II, ch.13 is referenced. There is also a cropped quotation from Book IV, ch.24, Bede’s account of ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’ (‘Canta mihi aliquid. Nescio, inquit, cantare’). Note that this is an Anglo-Saxon text written in Latin and therefore bridges the historical span covered by Harrison’s poem.

Comment ‘Rome’s empire in ruins’ (a reference to The Ruin, of which the subject is commonly assumed to be the ruins of Aquae Sulis (the site of modern-day Bath). Roman architecture becomes Christianised in the course of English history; the Mithraeum is replaced by a church. Harrison combines Classical and Anglo-Saxon influences in other works such as the Oresteia, where translation of the Greek of Aeschylus takes on the consonantal and compound-word qualities of Old English.